What Ellie Did
by impossible hazelnut
Summary: The life of Howl and Sophie's daughter, Ellie. Also contains Chrestomanci characters, or it will. Probably better than it sounds! Please read and review!
1. bacon and eggs

My name is Ellie Pendragon. I bet you haven't heard of me, but you've probably heard of my parents: Howl and Sophie Pendragon. Yeah, you know them? From _Howl's Moving Castle_. And that's where our story starts: Howl's moving castle.

I woke up and lay, staring up at the beams of the sloping ceiling, only a few feet above my head. I share that room with my elder brother Morgan. I sat up, carefully, so as not to bang my head. I wandered downstairs and sat in the chair by the fire.

"Morning." I said to it.

"Morning, Ellie." said the fire. That's because it was our fire demon, Calcifer. I picked up my book, which I had left there the night before. About half an hour later someone else came down the stairs. It was my mum; Sophie dressed in only her night gown, as I was.

"Morning, Ellie! How long have you been up for?"

"Morning, Mum! Not long."

"Do you want some breakfast?"

"Shouldn't we wait for the others?"

"They won't be up for ages" she said "Let's have some bacon and eggs!" She got out the frying pan and began cooking the eggs and bacon on Calcifer. We ate them and she was washing the plates and I had gone back to my book when another person came in.

This time it was my fifteen year old brother Morgan, with a blanket draped around his shoulders like a patchwork cape. His brownie-blonde hair was sticking up in all directions.

"Morning Mum, morning Ellie, morning Calcifer!" He grinned and sat down on the three legged stool.

"Morning Morgan! Is your dad up yet?" said Mum, cheerfully.

"Nope." he grinned "Can I have some bacon?"

"Can't you wait?"

"_You_ couldn't!" Morgan pointed out. Mum glared at him.

"We got up at a reasonable time!" Morgan was about to protest, but stopped, seeing that Dad was up anyway.

"Morning!" he said "Can I have some breakfast? Or are only females allowed it now? Is that it? Morgan and I can starve while you have breakfast?" He gave me a tragic look.

"I'm not stopping you!" I said, looking up from my book.

"Do you have any work to do today?" Mum asked him. Dad put his arm around her shoulders.

"I _might_ be able to spare a few hours for my family…"

"Good. I was thinking we should all do something, as a family."

"If it will stop you from cleaning for a while, anything!"

"I know!" I said, suddenly exited "We could have a picnic! In the chipping valley!"

"That's a great idea Ellie!" Mum looked exited too now. "We could invite Abdullah, Flower and Sabrina!"

"And Michael and Martha and Edward and Kate!" chipped in Morgan.

"Do we have a picnic basket? Or a blanket?" I asked.

"No, but I'm sure Martha will." replied Mum. That settled, I went back to my book while Dad fried more bacon and eggs.

"What are you reading?" he asked, leaning over my shoulder.

"House of Many Ways" I said.

_ "Again?"_

"What? It's a good book. And it's funny reading about people I know and seeing how they've change in thirteen years." The book was very battered from reading so many times and a few pages were falling out. This trilogy was my favourite. A few years ago, when I was sitting in the same chair, reading Castle in the Air again, a woman had come to the door. The Wales door.

She and Dad had talked in Welsh, which I didn't know much of then, before she gave him a book. That book was House of Many Ways. Mum and I spent the rest of the week annoying Dad and Morgan by reading out extracts.


	2. another chapter

After a while I went upstairs to dress in my blue print dress and White stockings. I looked at myself in the mirror. Many people say I look like my mother. I suppose I have the same hair, but I also have my father's green eyes. I am not especially tall and not especially short. Morgan came in and I took that as my queue to leave.

I found Martha, Michael, Edward and Kate in the kitchen with Mum. They were packing a basket with bread, cheese and tomatoes.

"Hi Martha! Hi Michael! Hi Kate! Hi Edward!" I said.

"Hello Ellie! I haven't seen you for _ages_!" said my aunt Martha as she hugged me. I heard Dad come down the stairs and go into the bathroom without even noticing Michael and Martha. I turned to Mum.

"Do we have any cake? Or fruit?" I asked. She opened a cupboard and hunted through it, coming out with a bottle of juice.

"Martha brought some cake. Maybe Flower will have some fruit…"

*HMC*

About an hour and a half later we were sitting with Abdullah, Flower-in-the-Night and Sabrina under an apple tree. Sabrina, Kate and I sat up against the tree, talking. Well, I talked. Kate mostly just giggled and tried to catch Morgan's eye, whilst Sabrina just nodded and smiled at everything I said.

"….and then Calcifer told him that she was in the Waste!" I finished my funny story. Kate giggled, looking over my shoulder and Sabrina nodded, not quite meeting my eyes. How _could _she be shy of me – she's known me for ever! I took a bit of apple and cinnamon cake.

"Are you two even listening?!" I burst out, sick of them not talking to me. Kate giggled and Sabrina nodded. I sighed and took another bite of cake. "You don't realise how lucky you are to have a Mum that works at a cake shop, Kate. All I get is _flowers_!"

"Hhhmmm?" Kate was still gazing over my shoulder.

"Forget it…" I ate the last mouthful of cake and got to my feet. Grabbing a low branch, I hauled myself up into the tree, not caring when my skirt rode up above my knees.

"What are you doing?" said Kate, looking up.

"Climbing the tree. What does it _look _like?" I called from halfway up. Kate sighed and rolled her eyes. She may have a crush on Morgan, but he'll never fall for her. He's too quiet and artistic and _nice_. Kate's never liked me ever since I was born. I remember when I was six and she was eight and she tripped me up and I fell in a muddy puddle and she laughed at me and I said 'and' way too many times there, didn't I? Sorry about that.


	3. Trees and stockings

I was at the top of the tree now, on that wobbly branch that always feels like it's going to snap even though I know that it won't. I gazed around me at the chipping valley. In one direction was the mansion, which is actually the moving castle. In the other direction was Abdullah and Flower's cottage with the thatched roof.

I smiled to myself, looking down at the crudely carved _E_ and _M_ in the branch I was balancing on. I remembered when I used to climb up here with Morgan; before he started being all quiet and I started spending hours reading. I can read in Welsh too and used to spend hours in the library before, well…if I told you now, there wouldn't be a story.

I clambered down from the tree and, walking strait past Sabrina and Kate, went and sat down with Morgan and Edward.

"Can we go find some more trees to climb?" I asked. They agreed, and we wandered away across the valley with Mum calling after us to not to go too far. After a few minutes we came across a tall oak tree. I leaped up and grabbed the nearest branch, which I swung myself up onto. I minutes I was sitting on a broad branch somewhere near the top and Morgan and Edward were nowhere near as high.

"Come on slow coaches!" I called down to them.

"We're coming!"

*HMC*

The day past pleasantly enough, but if I went into detail about it all here then this story would be unnecessarily long and boring. I will skip a head to about a week later, when Morgan and I returned to school.

"Ellie? Morgan?" Mum stuck her head round our door as we sat on the floor packing our school trunks.

"Yeah?" she came in, carrying a pile of white school stockings.

"Did Dad tell you about the weekend?"

"No!" I said, whilst trying to cram petticoats around the edges of my trunk. "What's happening at the weekend?"

"Ellie, don't do that – they'll get all creased! And it's nothing hugely exiting; it's just that your Dad's cousin Julie is getting married. In England. And we've been invited. So we're going to England."

"But how?" said Morgan, rummaging through his draw of shirts.

"We'll pick you up from school and go." Said Mum, folding the stockings into neat balls.

"Cool!" I said, grabbing the pile of my stockings and cramming them into my trunk. I slammed it shut and sat on it to make it close. The tag on it said:

_Eleanor Lettie Jenkins,_

_Kingfisher House,_

_St. Peter's School,_

_New Hills Road,_

_Nonthengrey_

_Strangia,_

It was (and still is, not that that's remotely important!) written in my Mum's elegant green handwriting. Unfortunately, I inherited my Dad's writing. Which is, like, awful.

**Thank you for reading this! Hope you're enjoying it! I've written quite a lot more so I should upload it soon! In the meantime PLEASE check out my other story 'A Tale of Two Castles' as they go together and that will become much more evident once they get to the wedding. Thanks!**

**Impossible Hazelnut**


	4. The train, the dormitory and geography

The next day, Morgan and I stood on the platform of the Market Chipping train station in the scratchy green uniform of St. Peters. My reddish hair was done in two plats tied with green ribbons. Mum hugged me and then Dad did too.

"See you at the weekend!" they said. As the steam engine drew up to the platform, a porter started loading people's trunks into the luggage compartment. Morgan and I hurried forwards to give ours to him as well.

When we got on the train we were immediately swarmed by a crowd of fifth year boys who dragged Morgan off to sit with them. I looked around, wondering where to sit and thinking that I felt like Harry Potter, when I was hit by a blur of green and ginger.

"Ellie!"

"Annie!" I hugged my best friend back and then let her go. She led me along the train to a carriage, talking about her holidays. We sat in the carriage, laughing and chatting as the train rumbled across the Ingarian countryside towards Strangia.

At midday we got up and made our way along the train to the food carriage.

"I wish we had a friendly witch with a trolley to bring us lunch!" I remarked "Like in _Harry Potter_!"

It was dark when the train at last drew up to the platform of the Nonthengey train station. Unfortunately we had no thestral drawn carriages to take us to school, so we had to walk in a huge crowd, lugging our trunks. By the time we got to school, a large and old manor house, most of us were so tired that we only had a bit of supper before going to bed.

*HMC*

I sat up and looked around my dormitory. It is not as nice as the ones at Hogwarts unfortunately, just a long rectangular room with beds lining the walls. The sheets are as white as the walls and the floor is plain wood. There are big windows at one end and a door to the bathroom at the other. Every girl (and I assume boys do too) has a chest of drawers in which to keep her (or his, I suppose) clothes.

The dressing bell rang a great clanging from the roof. We had to get up and dress in our school uniform and plat our hair and wash and go to breakfast. We queued up in the canteen to have sloppy porridge ladled into our bowls. Annie and I ate ours as quickly as possible, as did everyone else.

After breakfast we had to sit and wait while teachers handed out timetables. I looked at mine. We had geography first. I sighed. Our geography teacher doesn't like me.

"Eleanor!" he barked at me as I entered the classroom. "Straighten your skirt!" I sighed again and pulled it a little straighter. I don't like mister Nordack anymore than he likes me. My class, 2c, stood around, unsure where to sit. "Alphabetical order." Mister Nordack glared around at us "Mark Abstie and Lauren Burton here," he continued along the first row of desks and then moved back across to the first desk on the right of the second row, next to the window "Eleanor Jenkins and Annabel Karstairs here…" Annie and I sat down, grinning at each other. We have been best friends since that first day the year before this story happened and I couldn't find anywhere to sit on the train other than her carriage.

Mister Nordack handed out bright, new exercise books. I dipped my pen into the sticky blue school ink and wrote my name, class and subject on the front of my book.

I spent the next hour being glared by Mister Nordack while he told us about earthquakes. I doodled on my timetable, covering it in cobwebs in splodgey blue ink. Every few minutes I would check what our next lesson was and, unsurprisingly, it never changed: magology. Magology is the study of magic, my favourite subject and something I hope to do at university next year.

We hadn't done magology in first year so I didn't know what to expect. The classroom was the same as any other, with whitewashed walls and a cupboard of leather bound textbooks and rows of wooden desks.

Something was written on the blackboard which I supposed must have been M Level magology. (M Levels are the tests you do when you're in Fourth Year) It was a lot of complicated symbols and words. I didn't have a clue what it meant, and my Dad's the Royal Wizard!

The teacher was a young, plump woman called Miss Hareton. She let us sit where we liked and then started telling us all about the Related Worlds.

I learnt, in that lesson, about how a new world forms, and how they're sorted into series. In future lesson, I leaned about doubles and inter-world travel, about Chrestomanci and nine lived enchanters.


End file.
